Google Data » Chang Kim https://googledata.org Everything Google: News, Products, Services, Content, Culture Wed, 18 Mar 2015 21:09:38 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.7.5 Add the +1 Button to Your Blog https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/add-the-1-button-to-your-blog/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=add-the-1-button-to-your-blog https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/add-the-1-button-to-your-blog/#comments Wed, 01 Jun 2011 17:29:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=c0166a5b1916271c67bec0bf41062fbb
“+1” is often used as a digital shorthand for “this is pretty cool.” It’s also a way for friends, contacts, and the rest of the world to find great things on Google search. Google launched the +1 button back in March as a way to help share web content and make search more personal and relevant. For more information about the +1 button, you can watch this short video:



Since Google made this feature available, web publishers and bloggers have been asking us how they can add the +1 button to their sites, including Blogger blogs. Today, we’re excited to let you know that you can add the +1 button to Blogger blogs with just a few clicks.

To add the +1 button to your blog, you’ll need to enable Share buttons on Blogger. To do this, go to Design > Page Elements on your Blogger dashboard, find the Blog posts area, click on Edit, and select the “Show Share Buttons” option. If you are already using Share buttons, the +1 button will automatically show up as a new share option.



By adding the +1 button to your blog, you’re providing an easy way for your visitors to recommend your posts to their friends right from your blog. Here’s how it works: Let’s say you blog about biking. One of your readers, Tom, finds your recent post about mountain biking interesting, and clicks on the +1 button. Now, when Tom’s friends and contacts search for biking or mountain bikes and your post appears in Google search results, they might see an annotation showing that Tom +1’d your post, helping your content stand out.


[Example of how a blog post +1’d by visitors appears on the Google search results page]

We hope +1’s will help your blog stand out better in search results, which could increase both the quality and quantity of traffic to your blog. Now, that’s indeed a big +1, isn’t it?
]]> https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/add-the-1-button-to-your-blog/feed/ 0 What’s New With Blogger https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/what%e2%80%99s-new-with-blogger/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=what%25e2%2580%2599s-new-with-blogger https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/what%e2%80%99s-new-with-blogger/#comments Mon, 14 Mar 2011 16:05:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=c5de239830b1b72a91bc2e16db58c543 Posted by Chang Kim, Product Manager

2010 was a big year for Blogger. We cemented ourselves as one of the largest blogging platforms and the sixth largest website in the world, according to Alexa. Blogger users published more than half a billion blog posts, which were read by more than 400 million active readers across the globe. We introduced template designer, real-time stats, comments spam filtering, mobile templates, web fonts, and more. And to top it all off, we were dubbed the most reliable blogging service around.

2011 promises to be another exciting year.



To start, we’re kicking things off at SXSW by giving folks a sneak peek at our next-generation user interface. The new design is not only cleaner and more modern, but it also uses Google Web Toolkit, delivering the latest in web technology.


Current post editor
New post editor
Current dashboard
New dashboard

We’ll also be showcasing our new content discovery feature that lets you uncover interesting and related content based on the topics of the blog you’re currently reading.


These are just a couple of new features we want to share with you. We look forward to unveiling more throughout 2011!

If you’re in Austin for SXSW, be sure to visit us at the Google booth—or come by and enjoy a drink with us tonight at our annual Blogger bash. 
]]> https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/what%e2%80%99s-new-with-blogger/feed/ 0 2010: Looking Back https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/2010-looking-back/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=2010-looking-back https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/2010-looking-back/#comments Thu, 30 Dec 2010 00:35:00 +0000
2010 has been an exciting year for all of us on the global Blogger team, and our platform is now more powerful, reliable, and active than ever before. As we close the books on another great year, we want to take a moment to look back at some of the highlights.

The makeover. The new Template Designer, with beautiful new templates and iStockPhoto™ background images, was one of the team’s biggest accomplishments of the year. Since the launch in June, nearly half of our active users have begun using the new templates (if you haven't tried our new templates yet, why don't you give them a try?) Our efforts to make Blogger blogs look more beautiful continued with the release of web fonts, custom background images, and mobile-optimized views.

Some great new features. 2010 was also a year when we added tons of new features to Blogger. We had a busy summer adding two new admin tabs to Blogger: Comments and Stats. The comments tab introduced a comments inbox and spam filtering; real-time stats, followed by stats gadgets, were also highly requested features. We've also added static pages, new share buttons, WYSIWYG post preview, improved YouTube integration, Zemanta post editor gadget, integration with Google Apps, and many other new features.

Rock-solid infrastructure. Of course features don't mean much when the service goes down, and we've made lots of behind-the-scene improvements to keep our service up and running as reliably as possible. Auto-pagination was one of our many efforts to reduce latency. Sometimes keeping our infrastructure robust meant phasing out features that are used by only a fraction of our users, but have a heavy impact on our system, such as FTP publishing — which some bloggers called a "hard but smart decision."

Reaching out to real users. Perhaps the most exciting thing that we did this year was to get out more and meet the real users, like you. We set up booths at SXSW and BlogWorld Expo (our first ever presence there), and we held our 11th birthday party all around the world. In addition, our face-to-face meetings were accompanied by our conversations with you over virtual channels like our user forum and Twitter. We will continue meeting you, listening to you, and delivering what you want for Blogger in 2011.

It’s been a pretty busy year for us, but we hope 2011 will be an even busier year where we deliver even more exciting releases to you. Thanks again for all your support, and we wish you the best during this holiday season. See you in the new year!
]]> https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/2010-looking-back/feed/ 0 Discover Your Blog’s Community with OneTrueFan https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/discover-your-blogs-community-with-onetruefan/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=discover-your-blogs-community-with-onetruefan https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/discover-your-blogs-community-with-onetruefan/#comments Fri, 17 Dec 2010 19:00:00 +0000 This is a guest post by Eric Marcoullier, CEO of OneTrueFan. Though Blogger/Google does not have any affiliation with OneTrueFan, we’ve found OneTrueFan as an interesting way for our users to build community around their blog and get to know their audience, and so asked Eric to introduce OneTrueFan for our users. -- Chang Kim, Product Manager

You work hard to write great content and bring people to your Blogger blog. You've built a great community of loyal readers, many of them reading everything you post. Too bad it's so hard to better know who your readers are: On average, less than one percent of readers comment on an article on the web; Regularly searching Twitter, Digg, or other sites for links to your site is tedious and time consuming.

At the same time, you're likely getting good traffic from search engines and social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. Unfortunately, these readers are incredibly difficult to engage. More than 80% of a site’s traffic visits just one time and reads only one article. Visitors driven by search and social media tend to skim a blog post and then leave. Less than 24 hours later, they can't remember where they read your content, so they'll never come back.

OneTrueFan surfaces the community that exists on and around your Blogger blog, creating a deeper sense of engagement with new and returning users, and helps you get to know the people who visit.


OneTrueFan lives at the bottom of your blog. People show up in two ways: they can check in via OneTrueFan or share a link on Twitter. (In the coming weeks, people will also show up when they share a link with Facebook, Tumblr, Posterous, and many other sites.) You and your readers can mouse over anyone's picture to learn more about them.


Readers earn points for coming to your site each day, reading content, sharing links and driving traffic to your site. The ten readers with the most points show up in a leaderboard, but those points only last for 14 days. Readers need to keep coming back because fanship is an ongoing process.

Now you might be asking yourself, "Why would anyone want to check into my blog?" Because they *love* your blog and want people to know that they are a part of your community. OneTrueFan is an easy way for readers to show you a bit of love without going through a lot of effort.

Getting OneTrueFan on Blogger is free and easy! Just click this link to add OneTrueFan to your Blogger blog. Once it's installed, you'll start discovering your community in no time.

Link: Install OneTrueFan to your Blogger blog
]]> https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/discover-your-blogs-community-with-onetruefan/feed/ 0 Guest post: Discover amazing products and earn money with OpenSky https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/guest-post-discover-amazing-products-and-earn-money-with-opensky/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=guest-post-discover-amazing-products-and-earn-money-with-opensky https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/guest-post-discover-amazing-products-and-earn-money-with-opensky/#comments Fri, 08 Oct 2010 00:49:00 +0000 This is a guest post by John Caplan, founder and CEO of OpenSky. OpenSky allows bloggers, including all Blogger users, to discover unique products and sell those on their blogs. As we are interested in helping our users find various ways to monetize their blogs, we’ve asked John to introduce OpenSky for our users. -- The Blogger team


For most of you, writing a blog is about sharing your passion in a way that connects you with others. That’s why Blogger was created -- to help people have their own voice on the web to share that passion.

We at OpenSky want to empower you to share even more with the people who read your blog. We do this by helping you discover great products and giving you the ability to share those products on your blog. Not only will you deepen your relationships with your readers, but you’ll also earn money from every sale.

Most everyone who reads your blog probably loves discovering new products, especially unique items that they wouldn’t find in a giant chain store. And your readers will especially love learning about stuff from someone they trust, like you.

That’s why blogging and product recommendations work so well together.

How OpenSky works

OpenSky is a free platform that empowers you to discover and sell unique products that speak to your passion. So you can hook up your readers with great things they’ll love.

While most affiliate programs draw away your audience, on OpenSky you’ll drive readers to an environment dedicated to you and your products.

For every sale you make we split the profits 50/50, which means you can make up to 4x more than a run-of-the-mill affiliate program. We take care of all the order processing, fulfillment and customer service. You get all the credit.

Sign up now, and discover great new products today.

What People Are Saying About OpenSky

Fast Company described us the best when they said:

"OpenSky may have cracked the code for web publishers and small e-tailers, delivering profits to both while helping consumers with a pain-free shopping experience."

Also, see what The New York Times, LA Times, VentureBeat, TechCrunch have written, or watch this video about us from Good Morning America:



Join us (and start selling) today.
]]> https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/guest-post-discover-amazing-products-and-earn-money-with-opensky/feed/ 0 How Blogger Inspired The Creation Of BlogWorld & New Media Expo https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/how-blogger-inspired-the-creation-of-blogworld-new-media-expo/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=how-blogger-inspired-the-creation-of-blogworld-new-media-expo https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/how-blogger-inspired-the-creation-of-blogworld-new-media-expo/#comments Tue, 21 Sep 2010 23:24:00 +0000

When the Google Blogger team asked me to write a guest post for the Blogger Blog, I really didn’t know where to start. Today it occurred to me that the story of how I found Blogger might be a good place.

I have been reading and commenting on blogs since the year 2000. I am a news and political junkie so most of the blogs I read were political. Tons of them were hosted right here on Blogger. I was amazed at the original news being reported; the insightful commentary and opinion; the incredibly moving personal stories from Milbloggers and their families and yes the crazy conspiracy theories. This Blogging thing was really incredible. Who were all these smart people?

So many times I wished I could be a blogger, but I wasn’t a techie or a geek and it just seemed like it would be too difficult. Fast forward to 2005; I was in the middle of my two-hour daily commute home on the 91 freeway out of Los Angeles and listening to center right talk radio guy Hugh Hewitt. He said something that got me worked up so I called in. I don’t remember what we talked about but at the end of the conversation he said “you should start a blog.” So that night I went home and Googled “how to start a blog.” Blogger was the first result. So I clicked through and found the message you have all seen and the message that changed my life forever “Create Your Blog Now.” I had no idea how easy it was to start a blog! It only took me five minutes to do something I had been longing to do for nearly five years!

Things started moving very quickly from there—someone actually read my blog. How the heck did they find me? I wondered. Top political bloggers from both sides of the aisle were linking to me. TO ME! Every political pundit I asked to interview said yes! Other bloggers were selling books on their site through Amazon. I thought to myself, I read a lot of books; I should sell the books I like on my blog. A friend helped me sign up as an Amazon Associate and I was off to the races. Then one day an Ad Network contacted me and wanted to sell ads on my blog.

I had so many questions. How much money could I make blogging? How do I add things like widgets and blog rolls to my blog? Can I do audio and video posts? So I started looking for the “Blogging Tradeshow.” Being a tradeshow and conference organizer for the last 15 years I knew there was a tradeshow for every industry. I was stunned when I realized no such conference existed. I asked my blogger friends if they would ever attend the “Blogging Tradeshow.” They all said yes. I asked my tradeshow friends if they thought it was a good idea. They all said yes.

And so BlogWorld & New Media Expo was born in November of 2006. We held our first event in November of 2007 with 1,600 attendees! This October 14-16 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas we will host the fourth annual BlogWorld & New Media Expo. Over 4,000 bloggers, podcasters, YouTubers, internet radio, and TV broadcasters will be attending and things have come full circle.

We are thrilled that for the first time the blog platform that changed my life, Blogger, will be exhibiting at BlogWorld. We have had folks from Blogger speak at the conference every year, and this year Product Manager Chang Kim will be speaking on “The Future of Blogging Platforms.” And now for the first time all of you can visit the Blogger booth (# 308) and ask your own questions. Or just stop by to say hi and meet the Blogger team, or like me stop by and give them a huge THANK YOU for changing your life.

By the way if you still need to register for the show, as a member of the Blogger community you can use this special code for 20% off of any registration package at BlogWorld 2010: BLOGGER20
]]> https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/how-blogger-inspired-the-creation-of-blogworld-new-media-expo/feed/ 0 Customize Your Blog’s Background With Your Own Image https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/customize-your-blog%e2%80%99s-background-with-your-own-image/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=customize-your-blog%25e2%2580%2599s-background-with-your-own-image https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/customize-your-blog%e2%80%99s-background-with-your-own-image/#comments Thu, 09 Sep 2010 23:50:00 +0000
We know that personalizing your blog is important. Although you can adjust templates, layouts, backgrounds and more with our Template Designer, you wanted more ways to make your blog completely unique.

Now you can use your own image as your blog background. Go to Design | Template Designer | Background, click on Background Image, and you’ll see the new “Upload image” option, which allows you to select and upload your image. There are a variety of options such as alignment, repeat, and scroll for how to display your new image. This feature is another graduate from Blogger in Draft. You can find more information in our original announcement.



Tips from the Blogger team: If you want a full-screen background, we recommend using an image that's 1800 pixels wide and 1600 pixels high, so that the background image can fill the entire screen even for the readers with large monitors. To make sure your blog loads quickly, background images must be small in file size. As the maximum file size you can upload is 300KB, you may need to reduce your photo’s file size using Photoshop, Mac OS X Preview, or one of many free online tools. You can also tile a smaller image, but keep in mind that patterns work better than photographs, which can make your blog look cluttered.

(The good)
(The bad)

This feature is now available on all Blogger blogs and we welcome your suggestions and comments on our Help Forum.
]]> https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/customize-your-blog%e2%80%99s-background-with-your-own-image/feed/ 0 Blogger’s 11th Birthday Round-Up https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/blogger%e2%80%99s-11th-birthday-round-up/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=blogger%25e2%2580%2599s-11th-birthday-round-up https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/blogger%e2%80%99s-11th-birthday-round-up/#comments Wed, 08 Sep 2010 23:04:00 +0000
Last week we hosted Blogger’s 11th bday celebration, and a huge thanks goes out to everyone who helped us celebrate! Since we were only able to attend a few parties in person (which was awesome!), we enjoyed watching tweets, videos, and photos stream in at #bloggerfiesta. From the four hour conference for 90 people in Manila, Philippines to the three person casual rendezvous at a restaurant in Duluth, Georgia, we heard great stories from around the world about bloggers meeting each other face-to-face.

Even though we’re an internet company, we know the importance of meeting in-person. It provides a great opportunity to learn from others, meet new folks and share tips. We loved that one Fiesta attendee even learned how to set up a custom domain.

While we had some fun of our own last week (particularly in our Sydney office), our favorite stories are the ones you’ve shared. We’ve linked to some of our favorites below. If you have a story from your Blogger Fiesta that you would like to share with us, please send it along to blogger-fiesta@google.com.

Blogger Fiesta Sydney in Google's Sydney office

]]> https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/blogger%e2%80%99s-11th-birthday-round-up/feed/ 0 Introducing Blogger Stats https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/introducing-blogger-stats/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=introducing-blogger-stats https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/introducing-blogger-stats/#comments Tue, 31 Aug 2010 03:55:00 +0000
Posted by Noah Fiedel and Wiktor Gworek, Software Engineers

Just in time for our eleventh birthday, we are excited to introduce Stats for Blogger. First launched to Blogger in Draft back in July, Blogger Stats is a cool real-time stats service that's fully integrated with Blogger; you don't need to do anything to enable it for your blog. You can find the new Stats tab on your blog’s dashboard—go ahead and take it for a spin!



Feature Highlights

Stats is an important piece of the blogging puzzle, as it allows you to track your blog's traffic and find out exactly what your audience is looking for. As such, integrated, real-time stats has been one of the most frequently requested features from our users. You can find more information about Blogger Stats in our earlier announcement; meanwhile, here are some quick highlights for you.
  • Real-time tracking. Each time your blog is viewed, you can see the change on your stats almost immediately
  • Insights about your audience. Top search keywords, countries, browsers, and more
  • Great user interface. Beautiful, easy-to-read graphs and charts

Updates

After our initial launch to Blogger in Draft, we had some very helpful feedback and suggestions from you. Based on them, we’ve made improvements including the following:
  • Self-view exclusion. Some of you wanted Blogger Stats to exclude your own pageviews, and now there’s an option for that: On Stats | Overview, click on the “Don’t track your own pageviews” link (it’s on the right side, under the pageview summary) and select the “Don’t track my pageviews” option. We’re also now excluding traffic coming from Blogger admin pages and post Preview, providing more accurate pageview data.
  • More effective bot traffic filtering. We’ve made several improvements to detect “bots” (the non-human visitors, such as crawlers) including extending our list of known “bots” to provide more accurate pageviews from real visitors.
  • Internationalization. Blogger Stats is now available in more than 40 languages.

We hope you like  Blogger Stats. By the way, there must be something good about August—not only is it our birth month, we’ve gone from four Admin Dashboard tabs to six, just this month alone! (The other new tab we’ve added this month was the Comments tab, which was another highly requested feature.) We still have some more ground to cover, but just wanted to say we’re working really hard to deliver the features you’ve wanted to see on Blogger. Looking forward to seeing you all at the upcoming Meetup!
]]> https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/introducing-blogger-stats/feed/ 0 Blogger’s 11th Birthday Fiesta is Almost Here https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/bloggers-11th-birthday-fiesta-is-almost-here/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=bloggers-11th-birthday-fiesta-is-almost-here https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/bloggers-11th-birthday-fiesta-is-almost-here/#comments Thu, 26 Aug 2010 23:08:00 +0000 Posted by Seth Shamban, Blogger Consumer Operations

It’s only five days away, and we hope that you’re as excited as we are about the 200+ Meetups that are happening around the world. We’re looking forward to your meetups, and seeing your photos, videos, and tweets from the event.

We don’t want to leave the best parties empty-handed, so starting tomorrow we will be sending out some Blogger birthday presents to some of the largest Meetups around the world. We can only send presents to Meetups that have organizers, though, and there’s still lots of fiestas that are organizer-less. It’s super easy and any one can do it, so if you volunteer you may be able to secure presents for your local Meetup.

For those of you who haven’t yet joined one of our Meetups, there’s still time! As a reminder, here’s the important details for the event:


If you have any questions about the Blogger Fiesta Meetups, head over to our official invitation.

We look forward to our first ever global meetups on the 31st!

]]> https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/bloggers-11th-birthday-fiesta-is-almost-here/feed/ 0 New Comments System on Blogger https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/new-comments-system-on-blogger/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-comments-system-on-blogger https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/new-comments-system-on-blogger/#comments Wed, 11 Aug 2010 05:06:00 +0000
Commenting is one of the most integral parts of blogging: it’s what makes blogging a conversation, not a monologue. That’s why we are pleased to announce two cool new improvements to Blogger’s comments system: much better spam filtering and the ability to view all comments on your blog in one place.


Introducing Comment Spam Filtering

A blog is an open communications system, inviting conversations from all web users. Unfortunately, spammers have been finding their way into these conversations. To fight spam, some of you enabled moderation of all comments or required word verification or login. While somewhat effective, these checks limit real-time conversations around your blog.

To address this, we’ve integrated Google’s spam filtering technologies into the Blogger comment system. Some of you will notice the new “Comments” tab. (Note: We are gradually rolling this out to all users, so some of you may not see the new Comments tab yet.) In the Comments tab, there is a Spam sub-tab that shows all the comments that are likely spam.


The comments in the Spam inbox are not visible to your readers. Here, you can permanently delete spam comments by selecting them and choosing Delete. You can also mark comments as Not Spam that have been incorrectly classified as spam (what we call the “false-positives”). Choose Not Spam and the selected comments will be moved out of the spam list and will be immediately published on your blog.

These feedback actions also help us better identify spam on your blog. We encourage you to occasionally check your Spam inbox to see if any non-spam comments have been marked as spam. Please note that spam filtering currently only applies to new comments.

You can report any issues with our new spam system by clicking on the “Report spam filtering issues” link on the bottom of the Comments | Spam page, or by visiting this Help Forum page.


Comments “Inbox”

We also created a place where you can see all the comments that have been published on your blog. The Comments | Published sub-tab provides a similar view as your email inbox. This view comes in handy when you want to see all of the comments on your blog in one place. With the new comments inbox, it’s easy to find new comments on old posts.



In the Comments | Published sub-tab, you can select comments and mark them as spam or delete them. When you mark a comment as Spam, it will be deleted immediately from your blog. You can also Delete comments for editorial reasons or just Remove Content to leave a record of the comment.

Comment moderation has also moved under the Comments tab and has been extended to allow you to mark comments as Spam.

We hope that adding comment spam filtering and the new “inbox” user interface will be a good starting point toward improving the Blogger commenting system and we look forward to your feedback.
]]> https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/new-comments-system-on-blogger/feed/ 0 Blogger’s 11th Birthday Party https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/blogger%e2%80%99s-11th-birthday-party/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=blogger%25e2%2580%2599s-11th-birthday-party https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/blogger%e2%80%99s-11th-birthday-party/#comments Mon, 09 Aug 2010 09:11:00 +0000
Last year, Blogger turned ten. We were excited to present you with a (small-but-mighty) bounty of gifts, a token to commemorate all of your contributions over the years.

Now we’re a year older (and would like to think a bit wiser), have some great features under our belt and are ready for another celebration with you, our closest friends. For Blogger’s 11th birthday, we’re hosting the first ever Blogger global birthday party!

We’ll keep it simple—we set the date, you set the parties and Meetup Everywhere will help facilitate (free of charge!). Through the wonder of Meetup Everywhere, you’ll be able to find other bloggers in your area and either join a celebration that has already been set up or start a new party local to you. The goal is to get together in-person, chat about blogging and celebrate with friends you may have otherwise only met online. Meetups can be simple, and no party is too small. Plus, we’ll be supplying each party with a download-able pack of party supplies, including makings for party hats, name tags and signs. And who knows, there may even be other treasures and surprises in store.

Your invitation

  • What: Blogger’s 11th birthday celebration!
  • How: Sign up for a Meetup near you or get one going in your town.
  • Where: Anywhere you are.
  • Who: Everyone! You never know who might show up.
  • When: Any time on Tuesday, August 31, 2010
  • RSVP: http://www.meetup.com/bloggerfiesta

How it works

Everything you need is on our BloggerFiesta Meetup site. To find a party near you, do a quick search on the map. To join a scheduled party, click on the I’m Interested button on the party details page. To start a new party, click on Schedule a Meetup near you at the bottom of the BloggerFiesta site.

When you start or join a party, consider volunteering to be the Meetup organizer. Anyone can do it, plus you’ll get fame and glory. That gives you the ability to set the venue and time of the party. Also, don’t neglect the commenting functionality—you can use it to chat and plan with your fellow attendees prior to the party. What you do at the birthday party is completely up to you.

If you want to get started talking about the meet-ups, you can


See you on the 31st! We’ll have our party hats on.
]]> https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/blogger%e2%80%99s-11th-birthday-party/feed/ 0 Viglink: Easier Way to Monetize Links On Your Blog https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/viglink-easier-way-to-monetize-links-on-your-blog/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=viglink-easier-way-to-monetize-links-on-your-blog https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/viglink-easier-way-to-monetize-links-on-your-blog/#comments Tue, 03 Aug 2010 02:23:00 +0000

If you spend as much time working on your blog as we do, you wonder if there's a way to get paid. Many bloggers monetize by selling ads on their site but now there is a way to get paid for your actual content rather than just the ads that go around it.

Any time you write about a product or service, you're connecting your audience to that product. If someone makes a purchase, the seller benefits from your written word—you influenced a purchase. There are thousands of websites that will pay you a fee for any business you bring them through a form of online advertising called affiliate marketing. With affiliate ads, web publishers are compensated for driving online actions.

VigLink is a content monetization company that makes affiliate marketing very easy for bloggers. We offer a simple snippet of code you can install in your blog that automatically and transparently does all the work for you. We've catalogued and signed up for more than 12,500 affiliate programs and we collect all the performance information and deliver you a single integrated payment. In return, VigLink takes 25% of the incremental revenue you earn.

There are no other costs or fees and nothing changes about how your site looks or behaves. Join VigLink and enroll your blog in less than a minute or learn more by watching this two minute video.




Oliver Roup is the CEO and co-founder of VigLink, a content monetization company backed by Google Ventures. 
]]> https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/viglink-easier-way-to-monetize-links-on-your-blog/feed/ 0 Get Related Content for Your Blog with the Zemanta Gadget https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/get-related-content-for-your-blog-with-the-zemanta-gadget/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=get-related-content-for-your-blog-with-the-zemanta-gadget https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/get-related-content-for-your-blog-with-the-zemanta-gadget/#comments Fri, 02 Jul 2010 06:42:00 +0000 Zemanta CEO

About a year ago this blog featured Zemanta, a tool that helps you get more out of blogging. Previously, Blogger users could install a Zemanta browser plugin to recommend content while you blog, enabling you to:
  • Read news to learn more about the topic
  • Link articles to improve the value of your post
  • Use pictures to make your post richer
Today we are pleased to announce that we've teamed up with Blogger to make it easier to use Zemanta on Blogger. To use Zemanta, just follow these three easy steps:

1. Click this link: Add Zemanta gadget. It will take you to a page to add the Zemanta gadget to your blog:



2. Select one of your blogs in the drop-down box, and click Add Zemanta. This will add the gadget to the post editor for your selected blog, and take you to a new post page.

3. You will see Zemanta is already turned on, waiting for you to start using it.




That's it! You are now all set up to boost your blogging. Simply write a couple of sentences and the recommendations will show up automatically. You can preview them and then simply click on an item to add it to the post.

To learn more about how best to use Zemanta, check out this video, browse through our tutorials, read about our selection as one of ReadWriteWeb's "Top 10 Semantic Web products" last year, or just get started and play around with it. We would love to hear your feedback or suggestions.

Happy blogging!

* Notes: Adding Zemanta gadget will automatically update your blog's post editor to the New Editor; Also, this feature is currently available only for English-locale users.
]]> https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/get-related-content-for-your-blog-with-the-zemanta-gadget/feed/ 0 Make Money With Your Blog and Google AdSense https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/make-money-with-your-blog-and-google-adsense/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=make-money-with-your-blog-and-google-adsense https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/make-money-with-your-blog-and-google-adsense/#comments Mon, 28 Jun 2010 12:51:00 +0000
AdSense is a great way to get paid for doing what you love to do: blogging! AdSense allows you to show targeted ads on your blog and earn revenue from your traffic. It also helps your visitors find things they may be interested in, based on the content of your blog posts. Best of all, AdSense is free and you have the option to remove the ads at any time.

The AdSense system shows ads relevant to the content of your blog and you can easily customize the look and feel of the ads to match your blog. If your blog is about fashion, you may show ads for shoe designers or clothing stores. If your blog is about cars, you may see ads for car dealerships or auto shops. Using filters, you can have control over the content of the ads you display by choosing to block categories of ads or even specific advertisers.

With the free suite of powerful AdSense reporting tools, you can pull detailed reports that will help you track your revenue and identify opportunities to earn more money. You can see earnings by day, page, domain or specific ad unit and can also use Google Analytics to see the source of your traffic and earnings.

Adding AdSense to your blog is easy. Just follow these steps:
  1. Log in to Blogger, choose your blog, and go to the “Monetize | Set up AdSense” tab.
  2. Choose where you want to show your ads on your blog and hit “Next.”
  3. If you’re new to AdSense, follow the easy online steps to sign up for a new AdSense account. If you already use AdSense, you can log in to AdSense and link your Blog to your AdSense account.



If you’re using a Classic template, you can add AdSense to your blog by following the steps outlined here.

To learn even more, come take a tour with Google AdSense.
]]> https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/make-money-with-your-blog-and-google-adsense/feed/ 0 New Share Buttons https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/new-share-buttons/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=new-share-buttons https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/new-share-buttons/#comments Fri, 25 Jun 2010 06:54:00 +0000
Sharing is an important feature for bloggers. When your readers find an interesting post, they probably want to share it with other people; this in turn brings more traffic back to your blog.

Blogger now offers new share buttons. The new buttons can be placed under each post and let your blog readers easily share your post via email, Blogger, and popular social networks—we now support Google Buzz, Twitter, and Facebook, and we plan to add more services in the future.

Blogger also has a Share link in the navbar, but for improved convenience you can now have share buttons below the post (we also gave them nice rollover icons). For Twitter, we’ve also integrated the goo.gl URL shortener to give you the maximum space in the Tweet to add your own remarks.

You can start having the new share buttons show up under your posts by editing the Blog Posts widget and enabling Show Share Buttons in Design | Page Elements. Go ahead and turn the new sharing buttons on, and let some fun sharing begin!

]]> https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/new-share-buttons/feed/ 0 Updated: Accurate Post Preview and New Video Player https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/updated-accurate-post-preview-and-new-video-player/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=updated-accurate-post-preview-and-new-video-player https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/updated-accurate-post-preview-and-new-video-player/#comments Wed, 23 Jun 2010 09:56:00 +0000 Blogger Template Designer, we added some other new features in our recent release.

First, the accurate post preview, a feature that’s been available on Blogger in Draft, is now available to everyone. Before you publish a post, you may want to preview your post to see how it will actually look to your readers, in the same format and style of your current Blogger theme. To try it, click the Preview button on the New Post page. You will see a new window open with the accurate preview of the post.




We also introduced a new video player that’s based on the YouTube player. The new Blogger video player allows full-screen viewing -- now visitors can watch videos that you published on your blog in full-screen mode. The new player also features a better user interface, such as animated seekbar (the red bar along the bottom of the video) and bigger buttons. You can also right-click on the player to see more information about the video, such as playback performance (“Show Video Info”) or network speed (“Take Speed Test”). Note that despite the new video player, the videos you upload to Blogger are still only visible on your blog, not on YouTube.



As always, please send your suggestions and feedback through the Blogger User Forum. Thanks for using Blogger!
]]> https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/updated-accurate-post-preview-and-new-video-player/feed/ 0 Help Us Improve Blogger https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/help-us-improve-blogger/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=help-us-improve-blogger https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/help-us-improve-blogger/#comments Fri, 04 Jun 2010 07:55:00 +0000
Interested? Sign up here.

Update: We have now closed the sign-up. We really appreciate your great interest! 
]]> https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/help-us-improve-blogger/feed/ 0 Guest Post: Blog2Print/Blogger https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/guest-post-blog2printblogger/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=guest-post-blog2printblogger https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/guest-post-blog2printblogger/#comments Wed, 12 May 2010 17:44:00 +0000

Since we announced the Blog2Print/Blogger program last Fall, we at Blog2Print have been busy enhancing Blog2Print in response to user feedback and requests. Our goal is to maintain the integrity and ease of the blog–to-book creation process while providing you with more editing power and control over your blog books.

I’m pleased to tell you we now offer two different layout options for your blog books: Compact and Snapshot. Compact, the original page layout, arranges your blog posts, captions, and photos into a page that makes the best use of space and minimizes the number of total pages. The new layout, Snapshot, keeps the positioning of captions, photos, and text as it appeared in your posts online.

Meanwhile, we understand that some posts just aren't meant to be preserved, and you should be able to decide which posts you put in your book. Now you can, as individual posts can easily be deleted from your blog book. Especially when given as a gift – sometimes a little editing is needed here or there before a blog book is gift ready. And speaking of gifts, you can now buy a Gift Card for Blog2Print.

A few more changes: we’ve raised the maximum number of photos to 1500 in one book, added Safari support, and modified the User Agreement to clarify that bloggers continue to own all of their content and can resell their books if they choose – just make sure you own all relevant copyrights.

With your invaluable feedback, Blog2Print continues to evolve and improve. Please – keep asking! We’ll keep delivering.
]]> https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/guest-post-blog2printblogger/feed/ 0 Share Blogger posts to Buzz https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/share-blogger-posts-to-buzz/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=share-blogger-posts-to-buzz https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/share-blogger-posts-to-buzz/#comments Thu, 15 Apr 2010 02:27:00 +0000
When Google Buzz launched in February, many wondered how they could share cool posts to their Buzz stream. That’s why we’re excited to announce that Blogger has made it easy to share to Google Buzz via the Share button in the Blogger navigation bar. Just click “Share”, choose Google Buzz, and you’ll be able to customize your message before posting to Buzz.





Google Buzz is a new way to share updates, photos, videos and more, and start conversations about the things you find interesting. Better yet, all comments to your Buzz post get sent right to your Gmail inbox so it's easy to keep the conversation going. Just go to the Google Buzz homepage and give it a try! We know you write interesting stuff, so sharing to Buzz is a great way to spread the word about your blog.

Building your audience is important, and sharing to social networks is a great way to promote your site. We are committed to make the sharing experience better on Blogger: more updates are on their way, so please stay tuned.
]]> https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/share-blogger-posts-to-buzz/feed/ 0 One-click Blogging with BlogThis! Chrome Extension https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/one-click-blogging-with-blogthis-chrome-extension/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=one-click-blogging-with-blogthis-chrome-extension https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/one-click-blogging-with-blogthis-chrome-extension/#comments Wed, 09 Dec 2009 23:56:00 +0000
More and more of you are using Google Chrome (more than 30 million active users now!), and we want to let you know that a Blogger extension is included in the Chrome Extensions gallery. The BlogThis! Chrome extension is available now, one of several hundred extensions to be found in the Chrome extensions gallery.

Using the BlogThis! Chrome extension, you can start writing a blog post in one click. Whenever you are inspired by a web page you are looking at and want to blog about it, just click on the BlogThis! button on your Chrome toolbar, and the Blogger post editor opens up with a pre-populated link to the web page you were on. If you want to include any text in your post, simply highlight it before clicking on the BlogThis! button. Edit the post as you'd like, and publish it instantly or save it as a draft for future posting.


To try out the BlogThis! Chrome extension, first switch to Google Chrome BETA (if you are not already on that version), and install the BlogThis! extension by clicking on "Extensions" on your browser toolbar or visiting the BlogThis! extension homepage. Note: Extensions are only available for Chrome on the PC and Linux; Extension support on Chrome for Mac is under development.
]]> https://googledata.org/google-blogger-buzz/one-click-blogging-with-blogthis-chrome-extension/feed/ 0